by Ivan Blake
“Do you know her?”
“No.”
“But you’ll tell me if you hear anything, won’t you?”
Chapter 11
Tuesday, March 10
Chris was seated at the kitchen table sipping coffee when Jackie came in, wrapped in a towel and carrying the jar of Rose’s salve. “Good morning,” she said.
“Hi.”
She stood at the edge of the table.
“What’s on your mind?” Chris asked.
“Uhm, well, I managed to get a shower, and the stuff you put on my cuts? Amazing! My back’s still a mess, but it’s scabbed over and doesn’t hurt much anymore. Only I couldn’t reach all the cuts. So...could you? Before I get dressed, I mean?”
“Not without inviting another visit from Mallory.”
“Then maybe you could tell me the areas I’ve missed?”
“Okay.” He sipped his coffee and shook his head.
Jackie turned her back and lowered the towel to her waist, then scooped salve from the jar, and said, “Okay where?”
“Bottom of your spine, to the left, yes, there.”
As she stretched to apply the cream, she said, “So why didn’t Mallory attack again when you cleaned me up last night?”
“Left shoulder blade. There seems to be a lag after each attack, like she’s recharging her batteries. It doesn’t last long. Okay, now right side, midway down. Got it.”
“Thanks.” She retied the towel around her chest and sat down at the table.
“And your hair?”
“Permanent reminder of our night together,” she said with a smile. “It should be easy to cover.”
“You’re going to have the bruise on your face for a while.”
“You too,” she said. “Look, Chris, I’m sorry for what I did, what I put you through. You were incredibly brave, fighting Mallory off...for me.”
“Never tried fighting her before. Not sure I’ll do it again.”
“Okay, fair warning.”
Chris stood and took his cup to the sink. “Jackie, I hate to rush you, but I have to tell my friend what’s happened to the graveyard...so you’ll have to leave.”
“You mean you’re throwing me out? Just like that? Wham, bam, thank you ma’am? Literally wham bam?” Again she smiled. “But yeah, I understand, and look, if there’s anything I can do to help, you know, with the whole Mallory thing...”
“If you want to help, write something to get people in Bemishstock off Gillian’s back. She’s done nothing to deserve their abuse.”
“You really are one of the good guys, aren’t you,” Jackie said. “But sure, I’ll write something. And I was also thinking about investigating this Torajan stuff.”
“No, don’t. We’re taking care of it.”
* * * *
Jackie dropped Chris off at the library on her way back to Bangor. He steeled himself before going inside. He’d expected his conversation with Rose to be painful, and it was.
Rose insisted on hearing all the details. Which headstones had been shattered? Whose graves had been looted? How many coffins had been damaged beyond repair? She said nothing as Chris listed the stolen remains, but her eyes filled with tears, and she sobbed quietly. Chris took full responsibility for letting the raid happen and begged Rose’s forgiveness. If only he hadn’t got caught up in Cathar history again, he admitted to Rose, he might have noticed the activity across the pond and been able to stop it. She didn’t reply. In spite of her tears, she looked at Chris with affection, and placed her hand on his.
After several minutes, Rose asked if Chris had seen spirits near the defiled graves. Yes, he replied, just as she’d said he would. He’d seen them weeping, kneeling by their desecrated graves, and the sight had broken his heart. He’d had no idea of the agony and loss the dead might feel at being ripped from Paradise. To be separated from their Creator and doomed for all time to mourn by their defiled graves must be more harrowing for the dead than even the torment of Hell.
“Surely there’s something we can do to help them. Some special mass or service of forgiveness, something?”
“No,” Rose replied, “not without their remains, not without their reinterment in reconsecrated ground.”
“Then we have to get them back,” he said. “Rose, I swear, I’ll get back every last bone.”
“Do you have any idea where they might be?”
“It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? Gilbert and his bunch have them. Not sure why, but they like all the death stuff and they visited the cemetery the other day. Besides, who else has shown any interest in the place?”
“You don’t think this is some kind of vicious stunt by the Mayor to punish me?”
“Judging by the amount of damage done, a lot of people were involved. The shape the Mayor’s in and the few people in town who’d follow his lead, I don’t think he could have managed the job.”
“Burgoyne it is then,” Rose said. “So, we should get the police involved, get them to search the theater.”
* * * *
Chris and Rose pulled on their coats and gloves and raced through the slush and puddles to the police station. They could have saved themselves the bother. The sergeant on duty took down the particulars of their complaint, said he’d send an officer in the next few days to have a look at the damage, and take some pictures. He refused, however, to send anyone to the theater to look for bones. They’d never get a search warrant, he said. Police can’t go searching people’s premises without compelling suspicion. Besides, the Mayor had warned the Chief that Rose DuCalice might try to disrupt work on the festival. In particular, the Mayor had said she might cook up a phony complaint against the theater.
The desecration of her family cemetery wasn’t a phony complaint, Rose cried, but neither did it justify an unlawful search of the theater, replied the sergeant.
The sergeant then turned to Chris. “And you,” he said. “We’ve received inquiries about you from Maine. I was planning to look you up, so it’s a happy coincidence you’ve come in today. Saves me the hassle. It seems there’s been a murder in some place called Bemishstock, and the town police up there have put out a call for help in finding you.”
“Am I a suspect?”
“No, but they think you might have useful information. We let them know you might be here and they’re making arrangements to talk to you soon. In the meantime, they want us to keep an eye on you. They don’t want you disappearing again. From the stories their chief was telling ours, it seems you’re not much liked up there. We trust the judgment of our colleagues. If they don’t like you, we don’t like you. So keep your nose clean, Mr. Chandler, or else.”
The phone rang at the sergeant’s desk. “Lewis Police Department, Sergeant Davis speaking.”
Chris and Rose looked at each other, shook their heads, and were about to leave when they heard the officer say, “Right, we’re on our way,” and then shout to another officer, “Fred, bad accident over at the theater. Ambulance dispatched.” He grabbed his coat and raced out the door.
Rose gasped. “Geraldine!”
* * * *
Lassa Tetana, Lady Twilight, the twins, and the Necrodancers were all standing beneath the theater marquee, sobbing, hugging and comforting one another, as the ambulance drove off, its siren wailing.
“How awful,” Lady Twilight said.
“All that beauty, gone,” Sweat whimpered. “Breaks my heart.”
“The pain must have been terrible,” Wanetta sobbed.
“I don’t understand how it happened,” Lassa said quietly as the ambulance turned at the end of Main Street and disappeared.
The police, who’d completed their investigation in under five minutes, had been provided an explanation, enough of one at any rate to be able to close their file. According to Gilbert, it was quite obvious what had happened.
The cast had been rehearsing their longest play, Gilbert’s magnum opus as he called it, the play which was to inaugurate their theater in three weeks’ time
, a play about inmates who seize control of Rottingwood Asylum and take their terrible revenge on the staff. Doctor Shadow had been playing the leader of the inmates. As such, his character had also anointed himself the hospital’s new surgeon. Rehearsal had reached the point where Shadow, having completed a lobotomy without anesthetic on the usurped hospital director, was supposed to wash the blood from his face and hands in a small bowl of water on a nearby sideboard. The basin, it turned out, had not been filled with water but with acid. Shadow’s face and hands had melted away in a matter of seconds.
In Gilbert’s words, “It’s obvious what happened.” Manfred Arimanes, the theater’s trusted technical director, had been repairing the enormous and very elegant mirror above the bar in the theater lobby. The mirror was made up of many small leaded sections, all etched with elaborate patterns and geometric shapes. Several pieces of the mirror were missing or broken, and earlier in the day, Manfred had begun etching replacement sections in an acid bath. He’d set up a work table in the wings and left the basin of acid on it unattended while he fitted the new pieces into the lobby mirror.
Since the company didn’t have a designated props master, everyone was expected to help reset the stage between rehearsals and return any props found lying around to their rightful place on set. Some unidentified individual over their mid-morning break must have come across the acid bath and, believing it to be Shadow’s washbasin, with the very best of intentions, placed it on the sideboard for the upcoming surgery scene. No one had come forward to say they’d moved the basin of acid because he or she was obviously too traumatized to recall what they’d done.
The police were persuaded by Gilbert’s explanation. The accident was the result of a terrible misunderstanding. No one was at fault. The Mayor, on receiving word of an incident at the theater, had arrived at a run. He’d been anxious nothing delay rehearsals, and since the facts were clear, he’d signed a statement for the case file to the effect that, in his judgment as the town’s chief executive, no workplace safety rules had been violated and no further investigation was required so the performers could all get back to work.
Geraldine listened through the theater’s glass doors to the others weeping and whispering. They were all heartbroken, but it had been Geraldine who’d most closely witnessed Shadow’s accident. She’d been playing the part of his crazy nurse and had been standing right beside him with a towel when he’d washed himself in acid. Shadow had screamed directly at her as his nose melted away. He’d tried to wipe the acid from his hands with her towel, but instead wiped flesh from his bones. He’d tried to clear the acid from his eye, but instead, ripped it from its socket. Geraldine longed to share all the horrifying images with the others in the hope she might drive them from her brain, but didn’t dare. She couldn’t join the others because, beyond the horror she’d seen, there was the terrible guilt she felt. She was terrified she might blurt out how she’d told Gilbert so many hurtful things about Shadow the previous evening. They’d blame her for what had happened to him, and with reason. “Oh God, his face,” she whispered.
A hand grabbed her shoulder. “I hope you haven’t said anything to the others about our chat last night, Crimson dear.”
Gilbert had snuck behind her. “God, no.”
“Good girl. We wouldn’t want any misunderstandings,” he said, then added in a voice which dripped with malice, “Besides, we wouldn’t want any more accidents.”
Geraldine’s heart froze.
Gilbert pulled open the glass doors. “Children, we need to get back to work. Work is the best way to take our minds off poor Shadow.”
They looked at him in amazement. Tetana turned away, clutching her stomach as if she was going to be sick.
“You’re upset, of course. I understand. What a terrible accident, and we’re all thinking about our friend.” Then Gilbert paused, his face hardening. “But sometimes the gods of the stage look unkindly on people who do not share their passion for performance. The gods expect dedication, I expect dedication, not indifference. So what happened to Shadow should be a lesson to us all.”
* * * *
Rose had left Chris alone in her apartment to clear away their supper dishes. She’d wanted to try one more time to see Geraldine before she gave up for the night. Since the accident earlier in the day, she’d tried two previous times to speak to Geraldine and each time been turned away at the stage door by some huge slug of a man who called himself Blood. The first time, Blood said Crimson was too rattled by the accident to speak to anyone, and the second time, that Crimson was too busy rehearsing to be interrupted.
Chris washed and put away their dishes, straightened the dinner table chairs, poured himself a second glass of wine, and wandered from the kitchen into the enormous reception room. Among the many books open on the huge reading table were several folio volumes of tintypes and photographs from the nineteenth century. One displayed harrowing images from the Civil War. His gaze was drawn to a horrifying tintype of the dead at the Battle of Sailor’s Creek, Virginia, then to a picture of General Sheridan astride his horse, and finally to General Lee watching the action at Marshall’s Crossroad from a nearby knoll. Turning the page, Chris discovered a newspaper article folded between the folio pages. From the Vermont News, the article was dated June 1, 1881, and included a picture of two gentlemen in top hats and tails, with impressive mutton chops and moustaches, and the legend:
Fellow Vermonters, Medal of Honor Recipient, Judge Charles Porter Maddocks, and Heritage Memorials benefactor, Mr. Bernard Monsegur tour the Sailor’s Creek Battlefield where Judge Maddocks earned his commendation for extraordinary bravery. The two gentlemen are members of a Special Committee of Distinguished Citizens convened by the Secretary of the Interior to recommend to the President and Congress on the Tasteful Commemoration of our national heritage.
Another Bernard Monsegur? Did the Monsegur family ever name their male offspring anything other than Bernard?
Chris then turned his attention to another folio book, this one on the Paris Exposition of 1889. The book was open to the inaugural celebrations for the Eiffel Tower and included photos of the base of the Tower with the Trocadero Palace in the background, of the Gas Pavilion and the Swedish Chalet to the right of the Tower’s east leg, and of three ladies posing in their finery and parasols on the Tower’s First Floor Promenade. Its caption read:
Elegant American visitors enjoy the breathtaking views of the Exposition from Monsieur Eiffel’s remarkable tower.
Shadows from their parasols obscured two of the ladies’ faces, but the third was remarkably clear for a hundred-year old photograph. Chris looked closer, and drew a deep breath. The woman was a dead ringer for Rose DuCalice. The same fine nose, the same striking eyes, the same long, slender throat, and even the same obviously ample bosom in spite of the lady’s tight-fitting jacket.
And another Monsegur? This time touring Europe? Well why not? The Monsegur family probably had amassed their fortune by the 1880s. But for Rose to resemble her ancestor so closely was remarkable.
The elevator was on the move. Chris spun about, feeling guilty for prying into affairs which were not his business.
“They still won’t let me see her,” Rose said angrily as she stepped out of the elevator and pulled off her coat. She must have spotted the guilty look on Chris’s face, because she asked, “What are you doing?”
“Looking at pictures. They’re amazing.”
“We don’t have time for pictures. We have to figure out how we’re going to get those bones back; that’s why I fed you.”
“But can I ask you something? Is the woman in this Paris picture a relative of yours?”
“No,” she said without turning around.
“She could almost be you.”
“We don’t have time for nonsense. I’ve got something for you. You’ll need it if we’re going to get my friends back.”
Chris followed Rose into the kitchen and sat at the table. From a tiny silver box, Rose produced a small
pendant. The pendant was cylindrical, half an inch long, with silver caps at each end and, in between, a tiny piece of hard, caramel-colored material inscribed with incredibly small lettering in a language which Chris did not recognize.
“Is it ivory?”
“Bone.”
“And the inscription?”
“Occitan.”
“And what does it say?”
“Mary, beloved Companion, help me in my time of need.”
“Mary Magdalene.”
“Yes.”
“Where did you get it?” Chris turned the pendant over and over in his hands. The silverwork was extraordinary, and the engraving on the bone so fine and delicate.
“I made it.”
“The workmanship is gorgeous.”
“I was a jeweller once.”
“And this piece of bone, you just happened to have it lying around?”
“No, I removed it from a larger piece.”
“A larger piece?”
“A finger bone.”
“A finger? Whose finger?”
“Who do you think?”
“God, I don’t know! This Mary?” He pointed to the name on the pendant.
“Bingo.”
“You’re telling me this is a piece of bone from the finger of Mary Magdalene? Rose, that’s not possible! Where would you ever get such an old bone, never mind from a person in the Bible?”
“You’ve read about the Cathar treasure.”
“Okay, yes. The treasure smuggled out of Monsegur before it fell to the Catholics.”
“Not all the treasure was inside Monsegur. Some of it, the most important part, was already hidden in a cave outside the walls, but it had to be moved farther away.”
“Okay.”
“The Perfecti couldn’t move the treasure by themselves. They needed help.”
“Yeah, from villagers who lived around Monsegur.”
“Forty-six in fact. Men and women, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives. All were asked to help carry the treasure. Most of the treasure didn’t look like much, just books and bits of wood, and furniture.”
